Looking back, to look forward this Remembrance Day

THIS Saturday is Remembrance Day, where I will be joining with many in our community who will recall friends and family who made a sacrifice we are yet to fully comprehend. We will remember them.

I say that we don't fully comprehend what has happened in the past, as we are called to learn from it and I honestly wonder if those lessons ever stop.

It's not that we don't understand the history and the emotions, but rather that we need to keep learning. Learning should be a life-long experience.

I have never met someone so lost as the person who was so sure of everything.

So in attending the service on the November 11, I am always looking to learn from the experience. There is certainly a wealth of information and many present at the ceremony who can telling tales as harrowing as they are courageous. Each of them as a story, a truth, I don't yet know. So I don't want to waste that opportunity to look forward as much as I look back.

As this year comes to a close (yes Christmas is here, too late if your not ready, start working on 2018) I want to continue to use the best of the past to inform our future.

This has been a very difficult year in our city, perhaps the most difficult in its history.

I don't want to write about the flood any more, but I know that's not possible. It is something many if not most of us will remember forever.

As a city we refuse to be defined by the disaster, but within that crisis, those harrowing moments, are the real stories that will make next year better than the last... if we let it!